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Entry: Civil Rights and Wrongs Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/civil_rights_and_wrongs#14837 Post contents: Re Sid Cundiff's comment: "2. Labor Theory of Value. After Böhm-Bawerk demolished the idea, the labor theory of value, founded by Locke, creeps in the back door. Ask libertarians to justify Private Property, they fall back on Locke: It is the result of their own labor, they say. The libertarians and the Marxists share this in common. Real Conservatives know that value comes from other (and Other) sources." As I noted in my post "Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors" (http://blog.mises.org/archives/007614.asp), our (libertarians') emphasis on "labor" is a slight confusion. But we can safely slough it off, as I have noted in that post; so Cundiff's critique is off-base. His other comments betray confusions typical of those with an unclear notion of property (i.e., non-libertarians). First, he implies that the "labor theory of value " doesn't "justify" "private property". This implies of course that Lockean "first use" or "first possession" does not suffice either. But remember: everyone has a theory of property rights. They all think *someone* is entitled to control a given resource. Marxists think it's the state (on behalf of the collective); Conservatives also think it's someone other than the private owner. But what does this mean? We favor private property; Cundiff does not. But he still has a preferred owner in mind. "Private" really just refers to a particular method of assigning title to property--we "Lockeans" say that the first possessor of a resources has a better claim on it than a latecomer or someone who has no objective link to the property other than what amounts to a merely verbal or particularistic claim (see my # How We Come To Own Ourselves (http://www.mises.org/story/2291)). In other words, the "Conservative," if he opposes private property, must think that a group of latecomers or outsiders with no link to a given piece of property has a better claim to it than its first and current user. That is, he thinks that a group of outsiders has the right to take it from the current owner. That is what he favors; that is what he covers up by simply saying he thinks private property is not "justified." Cundiff then concludes by saying that value "comes from" "other" "(and Other)" "sources." Several confusions are evident here. First: it implies value "comes from" or *has* a source. This is both positivistic (law can be "decreed"), and also seems to presuppose an objective theory of value (as opposed to subjective value theory espoused by Austrians). Second, it assumes that libertarians believes value (valued things? valued ends?) comes "only" from "labor". Of course not. Finally, we have the mystical "Other" nonsense. This kind of language is typically used when someone wants what you have in your pocket--they need to make owners think they are not the real owners of their own property, so they acquiesce when the State tells them to hand it over--for the benefit of the Others, of course. Sent at: 2008 11 21